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Tuesday, 24 March 2015

24 March 1968: The Aer Lingus plane, St Phelim, plunged
into the Irish Sea off the Tuskar Rock on this day. Just after noon on a fine spring daythe aircraft inexplicably plunged
into the Irish Sea off the County Wexford coast from a height of 17,000 ft,
killing all 61 passengers and crew on board. Flight 712 had taken off
from Cork airport about 30 minutes beforehand and was due to land at Heathrow,
London. The plane was apropeller
drivenVickers Viscount 803 [like above] with no known
structural defects that could explain the sudden loss of this aircraft. Of
the 61 people on board but only 14 bodies were ever recovered.

Witnesses say Captain Barney O'Beirne, aged 35,
managed to level the four-engine plane about 1,000 ft above the water, and flew
on for about 15 minutes before it crashed close to Tuskar Rock. There was no
black box recorder on the aircraft, which had undergone a major inspection
three weeks earlier.

The Guardian 11
January 1999

Speculation over the years has centred around the
possibility that the plane was shot down by a rogue British test missile fired
from an RAF base in Wales. However no set of established facts has ever been
able to show what actually caused the plane to crash with such a devastating
loss of life. The St Phelim Disaster is the worst ever
recorded in the history of Irish Aviation.